


These Were The Best Days Of Our Lives

by sunshinestealer



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 16:18:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7514899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinestealer/pseuds/sunshinestealer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cronus and Mituna's salad days, before everything went horribly wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Were The Best Days Of Our Lives

Back when he first transferred into your class, Mituna Captor pissed you off. Beyond belief.

It may not have been politically correct to publicly espouse your views on BUOYs, but you found their company beyond tiresome. Your blood colour was significantly rarer, the lowbloods having no fear of living near the ocean and getting the carpenter drones to set up hivestems with magnificent ocean views.

Alas, there was no upper class schoolhive that would take you in. The less said about that private academy you formerly attended, the better. Sure, it meant that you didn't get to see Meenah as often as you once did, but the rumour going around was that she’d starting skipping school anyway, despite Serket’s best efforts to plead her back into finishing her education.

At first, you were somewhat of a novelty in the school. The highest in the student population were generally cerulean, with the occasional jades who disappeared back into the caverns after a semester or so finishing their final exams. They admired your gills and fins and sea-dweller accent, but somewhere along the line, that had descended into cruel taunting. “Fin freak,” mockingly pronouncing words with that weird wavy accent… It had been intolerable for a few short months, but then the bullies grew tired and found other prey. Mostly leaving you to your own devices.

It was just the way Mituna Captor _strode_ in, like he owned the place. His skateboard slung in behind his rucksack, the way you’d sling your rifle (for entirely recreational hunting, not the senseless slaughter of lusii) over your back. That goofy grin made with far too many fangs in his mouth. Those stupid 3D glasses he insisted on wearing, along with the entirely yellow ensembles he wore exclusively. Terribly unfashionable and downright _gauche_ , to be so proud of your blood colour like that. 

He’d even painted his nails that obnoxious mid-yellow colour.

He not only strode into class, he slipped into the usually vacant seat beside you. You were sure that your classmates would start whispering and spreading gossip about this kid, but they seemed to view it as an act of bold rebellion. Offering sympathetic smiles and the occasional awkward thumbs up.

At least Mituna turned out to be some kind of mathematical genius. Not that you weren’t, but he simply _flew_ through calculations, finishing the assigned exercises in a record time. Then he’d fish out some tome on computing and work on adding more notes in the already scrawled margins.

In exchange for copying his work, Mituna asked you to let him know when the teaching drones were going to do their sweeps, pacing back and forth between the desks. This work of his was ‘thuper important’, and he couldn’t afford for it to be confiscated. Even for just one period.

So, despite the fact that he pissed you off on an intrinsic level, you developed a strange sort of friendship with Mituna Captor. Mituna just grinned stupidly at any attempt to insult him, seemingly having built up a data bank of every single sarcastic response to the troll stupid enough to comment on his eccentric fashion choices or the way he spoke. Any bully of Captor’s would find themselves quickly and summarily roasted, so hard that their Ancestors could feel it.

 

* * *

 

He started to invite you out to lunch out in some isolated part of the school. Past the sports field (ugh, you _hated_ Phys Ed), and past the running track. The school’s grounds stretched on for nearly another half a mile, but at least it was paved (for the most part).

He’d chatter with you while on his skateboard, asking you to dare him to try out some ‘sick move’ whenever you passed by a railing for a two-wheeled device. To your surprise, Mituna wasn’t all talk and bravado, he was actually a decent skateboarder.

And like any other skateboarder, he was proud of his extensive record of injuries. That infuriated you. The reason he spoke so stupidly? New teeth constantly growing in after continually smashing out his old ones doing whatever dumb shit Troll Tony Hawk was doing at the X Games, or on that Pro Skater game grub.

He now had the smile of an anglerfish, but the skill was most definitely there. He knew the physics of movement while skating, how to instinctively land a jump and the trajectory of any given flip. He was also very proud of the broken parts of his exoskeleton, like a lump of bursitis that had never healed on one elbow. A leg that he walked on a little funny. A shoulder that could pop out of joint with a powerful sneeze.

You both had stupid hobbies that had harmed the both of you. You’d singed off your bangs and eyebrows when a spell went wrong, been sick for weeks after drinking a potion that was supposed to purge negative energies. Dropped a full cauldron straight onto your foot. Tripped over your robes and straight down the stairs while Seahorse Dad looked on disapprovingly.

But that was magic, and magic was most definitely real, an unfairly disregarded system that could be analysed scientifically. The more belief you injected into a ritual, the more you felt its effects working. Carrying all sorts of crystals in your pocket, whittling a wand out of a twig, collecting grimoires on every subject imaginable. You were too much of a coward to attempt demon summoning, although you had entertained the subject when the bullying was particularly bad. It had taken you ages for you to open up about your spiritual practices and your belief in magic.

And he had the temerity to laugh at you for it.

Well. Until you gave him a demonstration.

For you were one of the rare breeds of troll who _could_ do magic, or at least, show the physical effects without relying on illusion or sleight of hand. You’d levitated a rock off the palm of your hand, and Mituna had blinked, before grinning stupidly and darting his hand in the space it was floating in. He marvelled as the rock spun from the forcible disruption of the magical field.

“Yer a wizard, Ampora.” Mituna chuckled. Then he activated his own psionic powers, red and blue eyes glowing as he levitated the gravel on the path beneath their feet, coming to swirl it like a galaxy around his head.

“And you’re an obnoxious asshole,” you replied, taking care to use something that didn’t involved a lot of Ws or Vs.

Mituna didn’t snip back with one of his famed sarcastic remarks. He’d just laughed his squawky laugh that you hated but loved at the same time. “The obnoxious asshole who you’re madly in love with. Seriously, I got an online friend who’s really into romance and I bet HE wouldn’t know what fuckin’ quadrant we’re going for.”

You blinked. Where the actual _fuck_ had that come from? Mituna had horrible social skills, which he tried to compensate for with his… unique sense of style, but he’d never even brought up the subject of romance before. Nor some Internet friend who probably tried to matchmake every troll he came across based on those sappy novels.

“…No fuckin’ way am I pale for you, short stuff,” you’d replied.

“Is it red?” Mituna asked, bawdily leaning closer until you were almost kissing.

“NO.” You shoved him and sighed. “It’s complicated. But we should be just… friends.”

“You friend-zoning me, Cro-bro?”

You dragged your palm down your face. “Maybe. But it’ll be the twelfth perigee of the never solar sweep before I ever find some concupiscent interest in your scrawny ass.”

“I love you too,” Mituna teased.

 

* * *

 

Mituna’s programming manual that he secretly worked on after completing classwork was a dense, massive thing. It was about the only thing that he carried in his rucksack, and you couldn’t imagine that it did any good for the scoliosis he claimed to have.

But you’d gotten particularly quick at copying Captor’s notes, and confident that the teaching drone wasn’t going to patrol for a while, you took a look over at the nearest margin open on your side of the book.

It may as well have been written in East Beforan. You were somewhat versed in a few occult alphabets and symbols, and the weirdos in your dreams always seemed to chatter in some clicking, excitable dialect that you'd only just developed an ear for.

Mituna had scrawled in hundreds of 0s and 1s into the margins. Binary code, you knew that much. But you had no idea how to decrypt it.

(And then Mituna would later tell you it was written _backwards_ and also had a secret code between the lines that would give a terminal virus to any drone that tried to parse it through their computer brains.) Why he was still in school you had no idea.

Finally, you confronted him about it during lunch after that period.

“S’a game that’s been unearthed. Some say it’s older than the universe itself.”

You had blinked. “Don’t be dumb, ‘Tuna. A game that’s older than the universe? Then where the hell did it come from in the first place?”

“Dunno. But some chick in East Beforus researched it, and I’m writing code for it based on the descriptions she gave on her blog.”

“Like what?”

Mituna rolled his eyes. “Like… Multiplayer gaming. Manipulating the game’s environment. The ability to go up an experience ladder and gain levels. Maybe even attain _godhood_ , dude.”

You had to snort at the ridiculous nature of that.

“When’s your wriggling day? I’ll get you a FLARPing set.” You’d replied, biting into your lunch:fried fish bites, seasoned prawns and steamed sea plants. As if anybody could accuse you of being stereotypical.

“Ugh, _no_. FLARP is lame and the people who do it are fuckin’ lame. No offence intended to present company, though.”

You jovially smacked him across the head.

 

* * *

 

Mituna kept some weird company over the Internet.

He’d invited you over for dinner, and while he was out attending to his lusus’ needs, you took a quick glance at his instant messaging app, trying to ignore the weird organic technology that made the PC tower also work as a functioning beehive. 

Some trolls liked to type in their blood colour, if only to make it easier for higher or lower-blooded individuals to know which sort of honorific words to use, the right tone when speaking in a video call, just out of politeness.

Mituna’s friend roster had one username that was typed in candy red. Another name was typed in purple just below your violet username. Then there was a name in teal. And was that a little ‘<3?’ beside it?

He’d come back in to see you just peering down his friend list, and he laughed before tossing a can of Red Musclebeast at you from the mini-fridge. So, naturally, you’d asked him. But the mutant wasn’t important.

“So… You know a clown cultist?” The fuckers creeped you out, to be quite honest.

“Yeah, he's an okay guy. Really good friend to talk to, could talk the fuckin’ hind leg off a hoofbeast, though.” There was that stupid smile again. “Lives in a monastery, or some shit? He’s got a girlfriend who sneaks in with him. And they want to get bonded forever.”

“Huh.” You were too cynical to dream of true love, even back then.

“And how about the girl in teal?”

“Who says it’s a girl?”

You rolled your eyes. “I know you too well, Captor. Course it’s a girl.”

“Whatever. She’s cool.”

“Only just ‘cool’?” You tried to tease, but your tone came across as a little too mocking.

Mituna’s fist tightened around his drink can. “It’s… complicated. Again. But…”

“But…?”

“I really, really do love her?” His cheeks had actually flushed ochre.

“Then ask her out already, duh. I dare ya.”

 

* * *

 

Mituna Captor pissed you off nowadays. But only because you’d seen what he’d become.

What sort of fucking idiot sacrificed himself for the survival of eleven fools who did nothing but bicker amongst themselves in a dead session? It would have been one thing if Mituna had _died_ in the process, but no. Fate thought it’d be fucking hilarious to hollow part of his brain out with a spoon and then throw him back to you, as some kind of reminder how horrible psionic powers were and how this game could absolutely destroy the lives of those who played it.

He didn’t remember anything after the accident. He'd looked at you, Latula and Kurloz like you were complete strangers, before the pieces started fitting back together in his head. (The foggy look also came from behind half-blinded, with painful-looking scarring around the eye sockets from psionic burns.) Words were difficult to string together, and his speech impediment became more pronounced, especially with the stammering and stuttering.

It was _problematic_ according to Kankri, to suggest that highbloods had anger issues. You certainly did. You’d given up on that belief in magic for nearly a whole sweep, and it had been difficult. Especially with you completely abandoning it rather than slowly dismantling every iota of your magical beliefs one by one. But it had been triggered by that one event, that you would refuse to talk about. Said event was horrible enough for you to repeat it in your mind every time you ever _thought_ about going back to the way you were before.

But you’d smashed up several memories of your hive when Mituna had been able to recognise everybody but you. 

Even with Latula’s reassurance that he’d eventually come around from the amnesia, and Kurloz’s enigmatic _goddamn smile_ as he nodded in agreement, you still had to head back and take out your anger on inanimate objects.

Kurloz was the one behind this all. He _had_ to be. He and Mituna were moirails now, all the more reason to play the part of the concerned, teary-eyed best friend who _truly never saw such a horrible thing happening_. Highbloods on Kurloz’s level were psychic to some degree, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for the mime to warp Mituna’s mind past the breaking point and back.

But he had no proof except for his hunch. Which, of _course_ , was problematic by Kankri’s definition of the word.

“You can’t just _assume_ Kurloz is a bad person due to his esoteric beliefs. Why, I’ll have you no that members of his caste have earned a particularly negative and rather unnecessary reputation when they are actually some of the most decent people in the land. The previous perigee, differing branches of the faith came together and raised millions of Boondollars for the misfortunate in our society, myself included. And they have done so for sweeps, donating far more to charitable causes than even the Empress. The orphanage I used to live in prior to meeting Ms. Maryam benefited much from a grant offered by ‘those weirdoes’, and I don’t think you’re being entirely fair in accusing Kurloz of some villainous plot when his faith actually teaches anything but that.”

The typical Kankri rant, abridged to save the agony.

Latula had tried to investigate into the case, but all who had been around Mituna - before he left to go deep fry his brain - kept their lips sealed. You’d probably offered the most information, you thought, even if it did come across as bitter and mostly self-serving. Aranea said she was going to help compile all the facts together in some bound volume, but the project was quietly dropped. Caring for Mituna’s wellbeing now took priority for Latula.

You screamed into a pillow as you thought of that clown’s stupid fucking smile. No proof, no suspicion, no witnesses. Just your friend, who’d willingly decided to enter a furnace and get himself burned up, based some dumbass prophecy he saw in the clouds or had whispered into his ear by a denizen or a chittering Carapacian. 

You pounded your desk in anger. You’d hardly ever cried in your lifetime, but now the floodgates were opened and _goddamn it all to hell_.

That’s where you all were going.

And that’s where Mituna already was.


End file.
